Tom Henricks Signed STS-44 Landing Cover — Goddard Shuttle Tracking Cachet, 1991 View Watchlist >
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Lot # Nasa110Z6
System ID # 29527504
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Tom Henricks Signed STS-44 Landing Cover — Goddard Shuttle Tracking Cachet, 1991
The night of November 24, 1991, Atlantis touched down at Edwards after eleven days hauling classified cargo for the Department of Defense — a Defense Support Program early-warning satellite, lofted quietly into geosynchronous orbit while the mission itself was wrapped in the kind of institutional silence that made the Cold War's final chapter so strange. No live payload commentary. No press briefings on the hardware. Just a shuttle and her crew doing work that couldn't be discussed. That was STS-44.
This commemorative airmail cover was canceled on landing day — December 1, 1991 — at Greenbelt, Maryland, home of Goddard Space Flight Center, the nerve center of NASA's Shuttle tracking and data relay network. The blue triangular Goddard Space Flight Center Shuttle Tracking Team cachet with its ascending orbiter was applied by the people who held the radio link — the ground team that knew the mission's every telemetry whisper even when the public knew almost nothing. It is franked with a 29¢ Flag Over Mount Rushmore stamp. Then Tom Henricks signed it — bold, unhurried cursive — and printed below in block letters: TOM HENRICKS / STS 44 / STS 70.
Why Tom Henricks
Colonel Tom Henricks, USAF, came up through the fighter pipeline — F-111s, test pilot school at Edwards, over 6,000 flight hours — before NASA selected him in 1985. He flew STS-44 as pilot, then went on to command STS-55 (Spacelab D-2) and STS-70 (the Discovery mission that deployed TDRS-7, the very class of satellite that made Shuttle communications possible). He became the first astronaut to accumulate over 1,000 hours as a Shuttle pilot and commander. Four missions. Four orbiters. His hand-annotated missions on this cover — STS-44 and STS-70 — bracket a career that ran from Cold War classified payloads to international science collaboration. That range is the story, and he put it right there in ballpoint.
Authenticity
Mesilla Valley Estate Sales will issue a Certificate of Authenticity with this lot. The COA will be issued by the auction house at time of sale.
CONDITION
Very Good. Cachet strikes cleanly and the Greenbelt postmark is fully legible; signature and block-letter annotation are dark and crisp. Light handling to the envelope with a faint ink offset and minor toning spots to the verso. Housed in a protective sleeve.
DIMENSIONS / SPECIFICATIONS
- Cover: 3 5/8" × 6 1/2"
- Postmark: Greenbelt, MD — Dec 1, 1991
- Franking: 29¢ Flag Over Mount Rushmore
- Cachet: Goddard Space Flight Center Shuttle Tracking Team — STS-44 Landing
- Signed: Tom Henricks (hand-annotated "TOM HENRICKS / STS 44 / STS 70")
- COA: Mesilla Valley Estate Sales certificate issued with lot
